Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Resurrection?

Published on Sunday, 20th December, 2009 in Blogging and Life. 7 Comments

I told myself almost a year ago that I was really pretty much done with blogging. I didn’t really see myself as a writer, and I didn’t really feel like I had anything to say anyhow. Here lately, I’ve found myself cycling back towards thinking about it more and more often, and I figure I’ll give it a go again. This time, I’m not making any promises to myself. I’ll just write whenever I feel like writing, and whatever I feel like writing about. You know. The way a personal blog like this is supposed to work.

I doubt if I have anyone with this blog still on their feed lists, but maybe I can coax a few old internet friends into trying to follow along again as I update sporadically and usually fail to come up with anything interesting to say, but it seemed to make a few people happy before, and for the love of all things good and decent, my job is sucking my soul from me. It’s not that I dislike my job, or I’m ungrateful for it. Rather, quite the opposite. I usually have a pretty good time while I’m at work, and having been unemployed for nearly 10 months, I appreciate beyond words the real blessing it is that I even am employed. But, there’s something missing from this whole Corporate America thing that I had while I was in college, and I guess that’s what really kept me from blogging before. I had release.

I had a few professors who welcomed me into their offices to shoot the shit and discuss various and sundry topics for hours, from our high-and-mighty academic pedestals. We were the academic elite. And, let us be honest here, the academic pandering that goes on in the college world is extremely nice to one such as me who needs the ego stroked. But, even more than that, it often challenged me. I had to think quickly and respond intelligently to questions to which I did not always have ready answers. My mind was nimble, and I could dart and weave around nearly any rhetorical obstacle. Nowadays? I feel slow, sluggish. I’ve grown fat and lazy in the year since graduation because there hasn’t been much of a reason to continue exercising. TV has really become a staple instead of books, and that’s really a shame.

I figure if maybe I start writing again, writing anything, then maybe I’ll at least get to exercise a little bit. Maybe throw out a little philosophy, or a few observations. Analyze some causation here or there. I think I’ll start with a critique / analysis of Avatar, and I’ll kick the people who say it’s about how humans destroy the environment squarely in the throats, because that’s a minor point, and you should be ashamed of yourself for stopping there.

Stay tuned. I might just get snippy.

Wordpress Plugins

Published on Tuesday, 25th November, 2008 in Blogging, Geekiness, General, Life and Quickie. 5 Comments

So, I’ve long been a proponent of free software and the like, but I’ve never been much able to contribute back, as far as software goes. Until now!

Last week, I made a wordpress plugin that turns any twitter style name into a link, automatically! For example: @rachelskirts @jacefuse @thursdayschild

See? Automatically linked. If you’re interested in said plugin, you can check it out over on its page at Wordpress. Twitterlinker is the name.

Enjoy! Comments are surely welcome. If you use it, drop me a line as well!

Achoo!

Published on Wednesday, 19th November, 2008 in Blogging, General, Life, Love, Relationships and School. 8 Comments

So, I logged in, and began dusting off the surface around this place, and decided to let everyone know just what’s been going on that I’ve been neglecting this place for so long.

First of all, I’ve been spending lots of time with my girlfrie…err fiancee. That’s right, I got engaged back in mid-October. The real surprise is that we’re getting married soon. Like, in December! While we’re not doing the big traditional wedding thing (much to the chagrin of her family), we are going to be having a spiffy reception. If you want to come, or if you just want to buy us some pretty stuff, I’ve setup a small site with the basic info on it, so give it a visit and make sure to check out the registry page.

So, in keeping with the getting married theme, we had to find a house, and quickly, since her lease on her own place was up on the first of this month. Given that we got engaged only a couple weeks before that, we had to hurry. We both spent a lot of time making phone calls, talking with possible landlords, and the like. Ultimately, we found a place, and it’s perfect. It’s a small 1930s 2 bedroom, 1 bath, and it’s really pretty much just perfect for the two of us.

Then, of course, after we found a house in record time, I had to move her in. Her work schedule didn’t afford much time for her to do it, so I grabbed a buddy, and the two of us spent a Saturday moving what she’d packed over to the new place. The rest of that weekend was spent getting things settled in the house.

As it turned out, the fiance doesn’t so much like to stay at the house alone, so we got ourselves a welsh corgi, who we’ve named Thalia (Tall-ee-uh). She’s a little special, but she’s awesome. Pictures to come at some point in the future.

So, I’ve been busy just about every weekend for the last month and a half, but that still leaves the weekdays, you say. Well, it would, but since I’ve been gone every weekend, I’m having to spend more time during the week on homework. I’ve got to make sure I do well, because I’m graduating in December now, not in May. So, you know, if you want, you can get me a nice graduation present, too.

In any event, apart from homework, things have settled down a bit, and I think it’s time to just hit “Mark all as read” and jump back into blogs now, rather than catching up on the couple thousand posts that have amassed there. Sorry, but I’ll try to go through archives and catch what I missed later on, though.

Busy Bee, Beaver, Bear, Whatever.

Published on Sunday, 3rd August, 2008 in Blogging, Geekiness, General, Literature and literacy on the web. 0 Comments

This has been a busy weekend for me. That’s pretty unusual because I typically just end up reading all day Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t get much reading done, unfortunately, but I did get lots of web-ly things done.

First, I moved this blog from tylerfontaine.com over to here, at my shiny, new, name-matching domain. That’s pretty exciting for me, as I’ve been trying to get a Thursday’s Child domain for a while now.

Secondly, I built a blog for my wonderful lady friend, and should go visit Kreestone at Smalltown Dinosaur. There’s no content there yet, but she’s working on that. I ended up being pretty happy with the design, but any comments or suggestions are always welcome.

Thirdly, I created a new more professionally oriented blog over at my other domain. The idea will be to focus on literary criticism, rhetoric, and the like. I’ll be posting some papers I’ve written and my thoughts on the subjects. I’m also working on getting some people together to start a new project, in which the wide reading habits of scholars everywhere can input their analyses on whatever books they have read. Using tags and categories, I hope to be able to track thematic situations across genres, epochs, and cultures. It would be an interesting study if I can get the manpower behind it.

I’m going to actually make an attempt to get back into this blogging thing, including picking back up on Twittering and commenting on all of your blogs again, like I used to. Sorry for the impromptu hiatus, but I really needed it.

George A. Romero’s Blog Post

Published on Friday, 16th May, 2008 in Blogging, General, Life and personal philosophy. 5 Comments

I’ve quite obviously been out of the blogging game for a while. The semester sort of blew up right there at the end, and I was a bit overwhelmed with a few things, so I decided to take a little hiatus.

Well, now I’m back (from out space), and I’ll be posting more frequently again.

Right at the end of the semester, from a combination of 4 months of not sleeping, a massive amount of work coming down on my head, and my ever-recurring chemical imbalance, I ran into some pretty severe depression, which culminated in my taking some actions I really ought not have. I’m not really going to go into detail, but suffice it to say it scared me and some people around me enough to convince me to go see a doctor again to get back on anti-depressants.

I’ve been on anti-depressants in the past, and I’ve never really liked them. As much as I know it to be false, I can never quite shake the feeling that by getting on anti-depressants I’m making an admission that I’m not strong enough, that I’ve got something wrong with me, that I’m a failure. However, this time, I knew I needed to do something, so here I am, back on anti-depressants.

In the past, the medication has had all manners of strange side-effects, which led me to stop taking them. This time, I’m on Cymbalta, and it seems to be working really well. For the first week or two, the medicine made me pretty sick to my stomach; however, they said that was fairly common and it’d go away. It did. Since then, I haven’t really had any side effects. The other medications put me into a fog, where I couldn’t think clearly or quickly, and I lost any sense of creative drive, but Cymbalta hasn’t done that. It’s equalized my mood without making me feel artificially giddy and without killing my ability to think.

I think this is a good thing: the medication is working like it’s supposed to, and I’m feeling better. Hopefully, that’ll help me with this whole blogging thing; when I’m depressed, I don’t really want to do much of anything, but now that I’m feeling better, I get the gumption up to do some writing every now and then.

I just hope I still have some readers.

7 Random Things

Published on Thursday, 15th May, 2008 in Blogging, General and meme. 2 Comments

I got tagged by Jessi over at A Medical Mystery, so I figure I can do this here just for her.

The Rules:
1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

  1. My favorite food is macaroni and cheese. The best is just the stuff from the Kraft box.
  2. I finished high school in 3.5 years, and I’m going to be finishing undergraduate work in 3.5 years.
  3. I have been engaged before.
  4. I’m afraid of all manners of things that there’s no reason to be afraid of. I have to turn on a light before I’ll put my feet on the floor when I get out of bed. I can’t stand the 3-tone sound that the phone company makes whenever you call a number that’s been disconnected. I get freaked out by any sort of sustained tone, such as a civil defense siren, but not just that, any sustained tone, even the long violin sounds they have in horror movies.
  5. I once had plans to work in weapons development with an electrical engineering degree. I was going to make things that kill people. Even though I’ve given up on the engineering idea, I still have a desire to work in weapons development, even though I really can’t anymore.
  6. I have a 3.7 GPA in college, and I have taken 18 hours nearly every semester, largely because I’m a masochist.
  7. I’m a male from Texas, so I drive a pickup truck, but my dream car is a VW Jetta.

Because I’m so bad at being a blogger, I’m not going to nominate anyone to do this meme. If you found it here and decided to do it, then gimme a link back, or something. Otherwise, just enjoy!